Lately I’ve really been conscious of how little time I have left in Panama. Therefore, I’m trying to spend as much time visiting people when I’m in my community, to soak up as much of the daily experiences that define my life here. So my blog may become a collection of these vignettes, since I’ve sort of moved from a project and accomplishment-focused existence to something more like being a part of this community.
Slingshots
The men who work the land around here, planting rice, corn, beans and having cows all carry a few things with them when they go out into the fields. Generally they bring water, a machete, and a woven bag called a chakara. I never really thought about what was in the bag, but the other day I was hanging out with one farmer (he likes to converse with me…I still don’t understand a lot of what he talks about because he gets going really fast in Spanish using new words and referring to things that I have no context for) and his brother comes up the road. He mentions there’s something in the tree (a hawk or other raptor) that kills chickens. Out of the chakara comes a slingshot and his ammo. I was delighted to see him use, in all seriousness, a slingshot to try to conquer the bird. The little boys often carry around slingshots, but I had never seen an adult use one. The young kids are pretty deft with them, knocking bats out of the banana palms and such. I’m not sure why this little tidbit makes me so happy, but I think it has something to do with elegantly simple technology that is still in use and is still being passed on to the younger generation. Call me romantic, but amidst constant reminders that this country is letting its youth forget its culture (encouraging it almost, for example: the emphasis they put on learning English to be able to be a part of the world economy…seriously, that’s Panama’s 20-year plan as far as I can tell, teach English phrases to kindergarteners), I like knowing that the slingshot is still in use.
